the collective foreign policies of Europe, and anyone else that isn't directly sharing a border with Syria could give a fuck
How much could they give? Or do you mean the opposite of that.
OH BOY LET'S INVADE! LET'S SANCTION! BOMB THE FUCK OUT OF DAMASCUS!!
I must have missed where anybody has bombed in Syria, except for the Syrian government. And the only invasion is from Iran and the people they're sponsoring. Is that what you meant?
So every act of self defense involves the defending person being mad at the person that's attacking them? That's your best means by which to describe it?
Being mad at someone for doing something, and then defending yourself from a different act by that person are two different things. Your strange need to conflate them suggests some seriously childish thinking, and pretends that the other party has no role in what plays out during a violent conflict. You don't know what the younger guy did (other than that his wife thought it important to try to stop him), so instead you're fabricating.
It's a fact that he shot the guy because he was mad at him? How do you know this fact?
speculating that it may have been self-defense is just outright fantasy
No, speculating that he decided to shoot the guy because he was mad at him is outright fantasy. But the fact that he was a well respected career cop means that he spent decades evaluating other people's body language and actions. Whether or not he mis-judged in this case, you pretending that the only thought process going on was "I'm mad at him about texting, so I think I'll shoot him" is pure fantasy on your part. You can't have it both ways.
So it looks like you're just supporting the guy with the gun
No, I'm questioning what "in a movie theater" has to do with anything. Either he was fearing for his safety or he wasn't. The location really doesn't have anything to do with it. Whether he completely misjudged the other guy's actions or not has nothing to do with the venue.
"My years of experience led me to believe that this guy could become dangerously violent shortly" is not a justifiable cause for using lethal force.
I doubt you'll find anyone disagreeing with that. The question is whether someone is perceived as being in the moment in the process of becoming violent. It's the difference between fearing for your safety and perceiving a threat that such a condition might shortly exist. You'd probably know when you're dealing with someone who looks like he's boiling over and could become violent. And you'd probably also know, just watching someone's face, when the boiling over has occurred, and he's about to lunge or swing at you. It's possible that when a guy's wife reaches out to block her husband's movement (as happened in this case) the older guy's ongoing calculus about feeling threatened changed. Who knows. It's going to be all about witness testimony as to whether his fears could have been real. Sounds like two people who could have been a lot less dickish and less inclined to ramp things up, that's for sure.
Even if the old cop felt he was about to get pushed or punched, there is no justification for the use of deadly force in a fucking movie theater.
What does "in a movie theater" have to do with qualifying whether or not a 70+ year old guy is in fear of getting a beating from a a guy 30 years younger? He already went to try to get help from the theater management, and got none. You know that the younger guy wasn't coming across as physically threatening?
More to the point: is there ever justification for using violence to defend yourself? How violent, exactly, do you consider allowable? Assume that the person about to be injured is over 70 years old. Should that person be considered OK to put the younger man in a neck hold until the cops get their? Deflect a punch that might kill him, and then use a round-house kick to knock him out, like in the movies? All the old people you know are Chuck Norris?
Be specific. When can someone defend themselves? Only once they're bleeding from a punch to the head? That's the time to decide whether or how to defend?
I'd like to hear your specific rules of engagement for old people. You can expand to general conditions if you want, but since we're talking about someone in the prime of his life with his wife trying to block him from his confrontation with a guy in his 70's, let's start with that scenario. How hard can he get hit? Is he allowed to used force if he's pushed backwards over a theater seat into the stairs, but not if he's pushed forwards? Details would be helpful.
Look I have seen *plenty* of situation where one person (sibling, friend, S.O., fatehr/son) put the hand over the arm, the chest or whatever. Those are gesture to *calm* down the person, and are in no way shape or form a restraint against a violent gesture to come
Really? In your family, people can't be calmed down without you laying hands on them in public? Are they unable to be reasoned with, otherwise? And what if they can't be reasoned with by way of having someone block them with their arm? What happens then? What is it you're afraid they'll do if you don't hold your arm in front of their chest? Specifically.
I said that a career cop is familiar with what a getting-violent person looks like. If you're not allowed to defend yourself until someone thirty years younger than you has already put a beating on you, then it's possible you won't live through the occasion. I didn't say the shooting was justified, because I wasn't there to gauge whether or not the younger guy's body language, voice, actions, and everything else might have added up to the old man fearing for his safety. But the younger guy's wife obviously felt the need to stop her husband from what he was doing. That's all we know, because that's what people there said they saw, and her hand was out to restrain him.
Who said you can shoot someone because you're mad at them? Are you allowed to beat someone because you're mad at them? No? Then are you allowed to stop someone from beating you if they appear about to beat you because they're mad at you? No? So, what, you just have to take it if someone wants to beat you? I don't know what the old man perceived, but self defense doesn't only apply when you're in the middle of actually receiving a beating, it also applies if you think you're about to receive one. No, someone doesn't have to actually land a punch in your face before you can defend yourself. Because sometimes one punch - especially from an angry 40-something into the face of a 70-something - can be lethal. So until witnesses can characterize what they thought the younger guy was about to do, and why his wife was trying to restrain him, it's conjecture. But so is you saying that the old man shot the guy because he was mad at him.
If the young guy was trying to assault the old man, a hand on his chest wouldn't have done the slightest thing.
Exactly. And a guy who was a copy for decades has seen lots of people in various stages of becoming, and being dangerously violent. That the younger guy's wife felt the need to try to control her husband suggests that the guy was telegraphing imminent violence. If the guy had been a calm, level-headed person, his wife's voice would have been the most necessary to remind him not to assault a guy in his 70's. Sounds to me like the younger guy's wife knew more about his likely behavior than you do, and she was there watching hit happen - and felt the need to try to restrain her husband in the face of a old man.
In this case, had there been one less armed ex cop in the theater, there would be one less dead person.
Except that study after study shows that in places where there are more concealed carry permits are places where there are fewer murders (as well as just less violent crime in general, especially in public settings). In broad terms, retired cops carrying in public is a net benefit. Regardless of how this particular altercation turned out.
What you are suggesting is that pay should be decided by supply and demand.
No, what I'm suggesting is that if you want something I can do, that we agree on a price for my time. That you don't get to tell me what that price is and force me, through the use of government power, to work at that price. And that likewise I don't get to use government power to force you to pay me whatever I say you should.
You have no idea what my politics are.
Your contempt for a market-based relationship between people who want things and the people who provide them is all I need to hear. You don't think it's fair that someone who can produce something better or faster than the next guy is more valuable to the people who want those things. That's because your fundamental understanding of "fair" is twisted. How can I tell? Because you're carefully avoiding any description of what you actually want, in simple, clear terms. The hallmark of every statist, collectivist, would-be slave driver that ever started a conversation by saying that two people agreeing on a price is evil.
Show a little intellectual honesty, how about, instead of pussyfooting around. You don't think that markets are fair, but you're too much of a chicken to come right out and say that what you want is the only other option: a third party telling the other two parties how they must relate to each other. All in the name of fairness, of course. Think of the children and whatnot. The song of tyrants.
You assume it's natural and moral that basketball players earn millions and beer sellers earn little
It is natural. There are very few people who can play top-level pro basketball. By definition, the best are chosen for their skills on the court, their ability and willingness to work with the team and coaches, etc. Far, far more people (billions of them?) are able to carry trays of beer around. Someone setting up a business to entertain crowds of people by displaying highly skilled competitive team athletics and serving them drinks have to do what they have to do in order to attract the right people to perform those tasks. Why would an athlete spend all of that time and energy working out, practicing, risking injuries, and all the rest if your preferred system would prohibit the team from paying them more than they'd earn for doing a job that requires less effort, no commitment, and which almost anyone could do?
And it's moral. Because the alternative is someone like you dictating what each skill is worth, or dictating that everyone must earn the same no matter how good or rare their skills may be. That you've swallowed that notion as preferable to two people arriving between themselves at an understanding of what a given effort is worth - that's pretty awful. People like you have ruined entire societies, and murdered hundreds of millions of people to hide the fact that dictating relationships between buyers and sellers always fails.
Yup. Just like plumbers. And farmers. And people who sell coffee.
Boo hoo. The "super rich" pay almost all the income taxes. Half the country pays no income taxes, and a tiny minority of the minority that carry the income tax load pay a huge portion of it.
This whole narrative about how some people are poor because someone else is successful is just whiny BS.
Is the guy who just gets by on $75k in one of the very expensive urban areas making that $75k because someone else is only making $45k? Please be specific.
Is the guy whose parents decided not to teach him to string together complete sentences selling beer for minimum wage at a basketball game while a dozen multi-millionaires play a game on the court? If they were paid $50 a day less per game, do you really think that that would and should result in the guy who carries beer around being suddenly more valuable to the crowd that's there to watch?
All I've got "left?" I'm repeating information from TFA. Your argument is with the author, then, not me. He's made it very clear how non-pure Snowden's actions were, and what a lousy (deliberately misleading, really) comparison the NYT made to other events when trying to out-lefty other editorial boards in praising this guy and trying to talk Obama into making a hero out of him. Even as he disclosed information about operations in Pakistan, etc.
His egocentric behavior doesn't need me to point it out. All you have to do is cringe while getting, for example, "The Alternative Christmas Address" from The Snowden, among other bits of cheesy posturing. Next we'll see him just like Assange, gesturing from a balcony. His own praise for notoriously oppressive governments should be all you have to hear.
You're confusing "observing and commenting on the truth, which you don't like" with "projection."
complaining that other employees suffered career damage because of his actions doesn't change Snowden's motivations
I didn't say that it changed his motivation. It just indicates that he didn't care what happened to them while getting his Assange Ego Rating into high gear.
I agree. Just because he knew that buy social-engineering some co-workers out of their credentials he'd get them fired, and clearly didn't care, doesn't excuse those people from being lax and trusting this guy they worked with.
No, a distinction that matters. Because he took that new job, and started compromising the credentials of his co-workers (many of whom have now lost their careers) pretty much right away. He walked into that new gig with a specific agenda, essentially lying from the get-go about his motivations. Take off the beer goggles and actually look at the reality of the situation.
We are in a cold war with China? Really? Over "balance of power"?
Yes, exactly that. That country is still run by a tyrannical authoritarian bunch of thugs who have people jailed (and worse) for simply speaking their minds about their form of government. That country is 100% completely responsible for the ability of places like North Korea to run a Stalinist-style death camp of a nation, attack other nation's vessels in international waters, and engage in all sorts of lovely nuke-making, etc. Likewise China deliberately aligns itself with regimes like the late Chavez's (no replaced by an even bigger fool!) who have wrecked Venezuela in the name of the same ideology that China's government ostensibly promotes, and who are trying their hardest to spill that same poison elsewhere into Central and South America.
China is now trying to take over more international waters, and only quieted down in that most recent stunt when actively confronted in the region by our military.
Yes, that sort of tension is real, and it won't go away until the regime in that country stops operating in its current mode. Eventually enough Chinese folks will recognize that they might be able to change things, and it will change. And they'll see that doing business with (for example) Japan is better than threatening it. The cold war with China's totalitarian regime will be won in exactly the same way it was won against the Soviet Union. It's a matter of push-back and patience as it collapses from within.
Yes. You, bothering to read TFA. This isn't about eeeevil gubmint drones spying on you. It's about studying how commercial and academic operators (like crop sprayers, people doing aerial photography or using a drone on a film set, university researchers studying wildlife and environment, etc) can be integrated into the highly regulated air space. Read before you rant.
Is it respect for employee privacy or respect for being able to pay drastically different wages for the same job?
It's recognition that you can have very different expectations and get wildly different results from two people (with different experience, intelligence, work ethics, and ambition) doing the "same job."
Yeah, if only we put them on Medicaid, or otherwise had state-sponsored socialized medicine.
I'm not poor enough to be given someone else's money to visit the podiatrist over a sore toenail. We're not talking about people who are gobbling up all that new medicaid spending. We're talking about basic middle class people.
See the paucity of details in your claims?
What? Those are exactly, specifically details. We used to pay just under $350 a month, and now we're going to be paying about $1,100 a month. We used to have a $1,500 x 2 deductible, for $3,000 a year, and it's now jumping to $12,700. The only plans available no longer cover the doctor we've used for 15 years. Both quality hospitals within 15 miles of hear are off limits, leaving only the crappy one on the wrong side of the tracks... and we pay 40% of any use of it. Co-insurance on our previous plan was 15%. I'm glad you think that's all just fine.
Unconstitutionally delayed? Please get over yourself
So you're cool with the executive branch unilaterally ignoring and/or modifying things that are specified as hard and fast dates in the law? Or is it just this administration, and this law?
Obama made an effort to accommodate employers
Like hell. He knows that millions will lose their insurance or see - just like me - sky-high new rates once employers are forced to play ball. Tens of millions of them will wind up in exactly the same boat. He wasn't "accommodating" employers, he was delaying blowback an order of magnitude worse than he's already gotten from the millions that were previously insured, and who are now without. For extra cynicism, he's already pushed back next year's price announcement window so it will come just after the election. Pure craven schedule adjusting to avoid the huge round of flack that's coming when people see increases even bigger than this year's once the actuaries take into account the fact that nowhere near the number of required young people are falling for this sick joke of a law.
This old saw?
I kept my rates down, before, by choosing not to include such coverage. It's not necessary. But now I have less choice and a much higher bill. That is due solely to the new ACA requirements.
Take your phony complaints elsewhere.
Which part is phony? My newly higher premiums? My newly higher deductible? Please be specific. If I don't actually have to write those much larger checks, can I just quote you and insist that the dollar amount is "phony," and also insist that I still get the coverage I'm used to? Can I walk back into my familiar doctor's office, and tell them that even though there's no insurance company for them to bill, it's OK, because that's a phony problem? Instead of your lazy ad hominem, address those specific issues please.
All these, and all the other criticisms of Healthcare.gov, all sound really crazy when applied to this similar situation, don't they? This might be a clue that this kind of hysterical reaction is equally foolish when applied to the Healthcare.gov rollout problems.
Straw man.
The hysterical reaction to the ACA relates to the fact that millions of people are losing their health insurance, and only some can afford to purchase the newly mandated services with the sky-high new costs. The fact that some of the people that are willing to try buying such coverage are having trouble using the federal exchange web site, or some of the truly broken state exchange sites doesn't change the main and most significant underlying complaint: the law itself is spectacularly flawed and results in deep financial distress for the same millions of people whether or not the web site was behaving in a useful way.
As someone who appears to trying to indirectly cheer on the ACA, please explain to me how the fact that my premiums have nearly tripled, my deductible has more than quadrupled, two of my local hospitals are now off limits, and that I've lost the services of my doctor is a good thing? Don't worry, I know the answer. You measure the goodness by looking at the people to whom all of that new money that's being taken from me is being handed, and love that the IRS has just hired 20,000 new people to handle the policing and penalizing surrounding this new tax. Yay! I hope you're happy. In the meantime, my household just took a huge cut in our effective income and a huge reduction in our healthcare options. This is what people are complaining about. The White House couldn't be happier that the web site is a train wreck, because it obfuscates the nature of the real disaster. That will be a lot clearer when the unconstitutionally delayed employer mandate kicks in, and tens of millions more lose their health insurance. But at least the people who can still manage to pay for it will have that forced-to-buy maternity care, even if they're single men or 55-year-old women. How convenient!
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the collective foreign policies of Europe, and anyone else that isn't directly sharing a border with Syria could give a fuck
How much could they give? Or do you mean the opposite of that.
OH BOY LET'S INVADE! LET'S SANCTION! BOMB THE FUCK OUT OF DAMASCUS!!
I must have missed where anybody has bombed in Syria, except for the Syrian government. And the only invasion is from Iran and the people they're sponsoring. Is that what you meant?
So every act of self defense involves the defending person being mad at the person that's attacking them? That's your best means by which to describe it?
Being mad at someone for doing something, and then defending yourself from a different act by that person are two different things. Your strange need to conflate them suggests some seriously childish thinking, and pretends that the other party has no role in what plays out during a violent conflict. You don't know what the younger guy did (other than that his wife thought it important to try to stop him), so instead you're fabricating.
No, that's fact.
It's a fact that he shot the guy because he was mad at him? How do you know this fact?
speculating that it may have been self-defense is just outright fantasy
No, speculating that he decided to shoot the guy because he was mad at him is outright fantasy. But the fact that he was a well respected career cop means that he spent decades evaluating other people's body language and actions. Whether or not he mis-judged in this case, you pretending that the only thought process going on was "I'm mad at him about texting, so I think I'll shoot him" is pure fantasy on your part. You can't have it both ways.
So it looks like you're just supporting the guy with the gun
No, I'm questioning what "in a movie theater" has to do with anything. Either he was fearing for his safety or he wasn't. The location really doesn't have anything to do with it. Whether he completely misjudged the other guy's actions or not has nothing to do with the venue.
"My years of experience led me to believe that this guy could become dangerously violent shortly" is not a justifiable cause for using lethal force.
I doubt you'll find anyone disagreeing with that. The question is whether someone is perceived as being in the moment in the process of becoming violent. It's the difference between fearing for your safety and perceiving a threat that such a condition might shortly exist. You'd probably know when you're dealing with someone who looks like he's boiling over and could become violent. And you'd probably also know, just watching someone's face, when the boiling over has occurred, and he's about to lunge or swing at you. It's possible that when a guy's wife reaches out to block her husband's movement (as happened in this case) the older guy's ongoing calculus about feeling threatened changed. Who knows. It's going to be all about witness testimony as to whether his fears could have been real. Sounds like two people who could have been a lot less dickish and less inclined to ramp things up, that's for sure.
Even if the old cop felt he was about to get pushed or punched, there is no justification for the use of deadly force in a fucking movie theater.
What does "in a movie theater" have to do with qualifying whether or not a 70+ year old guy is in fear of getting a beating from a a guy 30 years younger? He already went to try to get help from the theater management, and got none. You know that the younger guy wasn't coming across as physically threatening?
More to the point: is there ever justification for using violence to defend yourself? How violent, exactly, do you consider allowable? Assume that the person about to be injured is over 70 years old. Should that person be considered OK to put the younger man in a neck hold until the cops get their? Deflect a punch that might kill him, and then use a round-house kick to knock him out, like in the movies? All the old people you know are Chuck Norris?
Be specific. When can someone defend themselves? Only once they're bleeding from a punch to the head? That's the time to decide whether or how to defend?
I'd like to hear your specific rules of engagement for old people. You can expand to general conditions if you want, but since we're talking about someone in the prime of his life with his wife trying to block him from his confrontation with a guy in his 70's, let's start with that scenario. How hard can he get hit? Is he allowed to used force if he's pushed backwards over a theater seat into the stairs, but not if he's pushed forwards? Details would be helpful.
Look I have seen *plenty* of situation where one person (sibling, friend, S.O., fatehr/son) put the hand over the arm, the chest or whatever. Those are gesture to *calm* down the person, and are in no way shape or form a restraint against a violent gesture to come
Really? In your family, people can't be calmed down without you laying hands on them in public? Are they unable to be reasoned with, otherwise? And what if they can't be reasoned with by way of having someone block them with their arm? What happens then? What is it you're afraid they'll do if you don't hold your arm in front of their chest? Specifically.
I said that a career cop is familiar with what a getting-violent person looks like. If you're not allowed to defend yourself until someone thirty years younger than you has already put a beating on you, then it's possible you won't live through the occasion. I didn't say the shooting was justified, because I wasn't there to gauge whether or not the younger guy's body language, voice, actions, and everything else might have added up to the old man fearing for his safety. But the younger guy's wife obviously felt the need to stop her husband from what he was doing. That's all we know, because that's what people there said they saw, and her hand was out to restrain him.
Who said you can shoot someone because you're mad at them? Are you allowed to beat someone because you're mad at them? No? Then are you allowed to stop someone from beating you if they appear about to beat you because they're mad at you? No? So, what, you just have to take it if someone wants to beat you? I don't know what the old man perceived, but self defense doesn't only apply when you're in the middle of actually receiving a beating, it also applies if you think you're about to receive one. No, someone doesn't have to actually land a punch in your face before you can defend yourself. Because sometimes one punch - especially from an angry 40-something into the face of a 70-something - can be lethal. So until witnesses can characterize what they thought the younger guy was about to do, and why his wife was trying to restrain him, it's conjecture. But so is you saying that the old man shot the guy because he was mad at him.
If the young guy was trying to assault the old man, a hand on his chest wouldn't have done the slightest thing.
Exactly. And a guy who was a copy for decades has seen lots of people in various stages of becoming, and being dangerously violent. That the younger guy's wife felt the need to try to control her husband suggests that the guy was telegraphing imminent violence. If the guy had been a calm, level-headed person, his wife's voice would have been the most necessary to remind him not to assault a guy in his 70's. Sounds to me like the younger guy's wife knew more about his likely behavior than you do, and she was there watching hit happen - and felt the need to try to restrain her husband in the face of a old man.
In this case, had there been one less armed ex cop in the theater, there would be one less dead person.
Except that study after study shows that in places where there are more concealed carry permits are places where there are fewer murders (as well as just less violent crime in general, especially in public settings). In broad terms, retired cops carrying in public is a net benefit. Regardless of how this particular altercation turned out.
What you are suggesting is that pay should be decided by supply and demand.
No, what I'm suggesting is that if you want something I can do, that we agree on a price for my time. That you don't get to tell me what that price is and force me, through the use of government power, to work at that price. And that likewise I don't get to use government power to force you to pay me whatever I say you should.
You have no idea what my politics are.
Your contempt for a market-based relationship between people who want things and the people who provide them is all I need to hear. You don't think it's fair that someone who can produce something better or faster than the next guy is more valuable to the people who want those things. That's because your fundamental understanding of "fair" is twisted. How can I tell? Because you're carefully avoiding any description of what you actually want, in simple, clear terms. The hallmark of every statist, collectivist, would-be slave driver that ever started a conversation by saying that two people agreeing on a price is evil.
Show a little intellectual honesty, how about, instead of pussyfooting around. You don't think that markets are fair, but you're too much of a chicken to come right out and say that what you want is the only other option: a third party telling the other two parties how they must relate to each other. All in the name of fairness, of course. Think of the children and whatnot. The song of tyrants.
You assume it's natural and moral that basketball players earn millions and beer sellers earn little
It is natural. There are very few people who can play top-level pro basketball. By definition, the best are chosen for their skills on the court, their ability and willingness to work with the team and coaches, etc. Far, far more people (billions of them?) are able to carry trays of beer around. Someone setting up a business to entertain crowds of people by displaying highly skilled competitive team athletics and serving them drinks have to do what they have to do in order to attract the right people to perform those tasks. Why would an athlete spend all of that time and energy working out, practicing, risking injuries, and all the rest if your preferred system would prohibit the team from paying them more than they'd earn for doing a job that requires less effort, no commitment, and which almost anyone could do?
And it's moral. Because the alternative is someone like you dictating what each skill is worth, or dictating that everyone must earn the same no matter how good or rare their skills may be. That you've swallowed that notion as preferable to two people arriving between themselves at an understanding of what a given effort is worth - that's pretty awful. People like you have ruined entire societies, and murdered hundreds of millions of people to hide the fact that dictating relationships between buyers and sellers always fails.
they profit in times of booms and busts
Yup. Just like plumbers. And farmers. And people who sell coffee.
Boo hoo. The "super rich" pay almost all the income taxes. Half the country pays no income taxes, and a tiny minority of the minority that carry the income tax load pay a huge portion of it.
This whole narrative about how some people are poor because someone else is successful is just whiny BS.
Is the guy who just gets by on $75k in one of the very expensive urban areas making that $75k because someone else is only making $45k? Please be specific.
Is the guy whose parents decided not to teach him to string together complete sentences selling beer for minimum wage at a basketball game while a dozen multi-millionaires play a game on the court? If they were paid $50 a day less per game, do you really think that that would and should result in the guy who carries beer around being suddenly more valuable to the crowd that's there to watch?
actualize
Stop that.
So, by definition you have not added anything to the discussion.
I mentioned it because the GP clearly didn't bother, and arrived at incorrect conclusions.
The best you can do is a drive-by ad hominem? YOU must be proud, right? Coward.
All I've got "left?" I'm repeating information from TFA. Your argument is with the author, then, not me. He's made it very clear how non-pure Snowden's actions were, and what a lousy (deliberately misleading, really) comparison the NYT made to other events when trying to out-lefty other editorial boards in praising this guy and trying to talk Obama into making a hero out of him. Even as he disclosed information about operations in Pakistan, etc. His egocentric behavior doesn't need me to point it out. All you have to do is cringe while getting, for example, "The Alternative Christmas Address" from The Snowden, among other bits of cheesy posturing. Next we'll see him just like Assange, gesturing from a balcony. His own praise for notoriously oppressive governments should be all you have to hear.
Lol! #projection
You're confusing "observing and commenting on the truth, which you don't like" with "projection."
complaining that other employees suffered career damage because of his actions doesn't change Snowden's motivations
I didn't say that it changed his motivation. It just indicates that he didn't care what happened to them while getting his Assange Ego Rating into high gear.
I agree. Just because he knew that buy social-engineering some co-workers out of their credentials he'd get them fired, and clearly didn't care, doesn't excuse those people from being lax and trusting this guy they worked with.
A distinction without a difference.
No, a distinction that matters. Because he took that new job, and started compromising the credentials of his co-workers (many of whom have now lost their careers) pretty much right away. He walked into that new gig with a specific agenda, essentially lying from the get-go about his motivations. Take off the beer goggles and actually look at the reality of the situation.
We are in a cold war with China? Really? Over "balance of power"?
Yes, exactly that. That country is still run by a tyrannical authoritarian bunch of thugs who have people jailed (and worse) for simply speaking their minds about their form of government. That country is 100% completely responsible for the ability of places like North Korea to run a Stalinist-style death camp of a nation, attack other nation's vessels in international waters, and engage in all sorts of lovely nuke-making, etc. Likewise China deliberately aligns itself with regimes like the late Chavez's (no replaced by an even bigger fool!) who have wrecked Venezuela in the name of the same ideology that China's government ostensibly promotes, and who are trying their hardest to spill that same poison elsewhere into Central and South America.
China is now trying to take over more international waters, and only quieted down in that most recent stunt when actively confronted in the region by our military.
Yes, that sort of tension is real, and it won't go away until the regime in that country stops operating in its current mode. Eventually enough Chinese folks will recognize that they might be able to change things, and it will change. And they'll see that doing business with (for example) Japan is better than threatening it. The cold war with China's totalitarian regime will be won in exactly the same way it was won against the Soviet Union. It's a matter of push-back and patience as it collapses from within.
Yeah, I thought so.
anything missing here?
Yes. You, bothering to read TFA. This isn't about eeeevil gubmint drones spying on you. It's about studying how commercial and academic operators (like crop sprayers, people doing aerial photography or using a drone on a film set, university researchers studying wildlife and environment, etc) can be integrated into the highly regulated air space. Read before you rant.
Is it respect for employee privacy or respect for being able to pay drastically different wages for the same job?
It's recognition that you can have very different expectations and get wildly different results from two people (with different experience, intelligence, work ethics, and ambition) doing the "same job."
Yeah, if only we put them on Medicaid, or otherwise had state-sponsored socialized medicine.
I'm not poor enough to be given someone else's money to visit the podiatrist over a sore toenail. We're not talking about people who are gobbling up all that new medicaid spending. We're talking about basic middle class people.
See the paucity of details in your claims?
What? Those are exactly, specifically details. We used to pay just under $350 a month, and now we're going to be paying about $1,100 a month. We used to have a $1,500 x 2 deductible, for $3,000 a year, and it's now jumping to $12,700. The only plans available no longer cover the doctor we've used for 15 years. Both quality hospitals within 15 miles of hear are off limits, leaving only the crappy one on the wrong side of the tracks ... and we pay 40% of any use of it. Co-insurance on our previous plan was 15%. I'm glad you think that's all just fine.
Unconstitutionally delayed? Please get over yourself
So you're cool with the executive branch unilaterally ignoring and/or modifying things that are specified as hard and fast dates in the law? Or is it just this administration, and this law?
Obama made an effort to accommodate employers
Like hell. He knows that millions will lose their insurance or see - just like me - sky-high new rates once employers are forced to play ball. Tens of millions of them will wind up in exactly the same boat. He wasn't "accommodating" employers, he was delaying blowback an order of magnitude worse than he's already gotten from the millions that were previously insured, and who are now without. For extra cynicism, he's already pushed back next year's price announcement window so it will come just after the election. Pure craven schedule adjusting to avoid the huge round of flack that's coming when people see increases even bigger than this year's once the actuaries take into account the fact that nowhere near the number of required young people are falling for this sick joke of a law.
This old saw?
I kept my rates down, before, by choosing not to include such coverage. It's not necessary. But now I have less choice and a much higher bill. That is due solely to the new ACA requirements.
Take your phony complaints elsewhere.
Which part is phony? My newly higher premiums? My newly higher deductible? Please be specific. If I don't actually have to write those much larger checks, can I just quote you and insist that the dollar amount is "phony," and also insist that I still get the coverage I'm used to? Can I walk back into my familiar doctor's office, and tell them that even though there's no insurance company for them to bill, it's OK, because that's a phony problem? Instead of your lazy ad hominem, address those specific issues please.
All these, and all the other criticisms of Healthcare.gov, all sound really crazy when applied to this similar situation, don't they? This might be a clue that this kind of hysterical reaction is equally foolish when applied to the Healthcare.gov rollout problems.
Straw man.
The hysterical reaction to the ACA relates to the fact that millions of people are losing their health insurance, and only some can afford to purchase the newly mandated services with the sky-high new costs. The fact that some of the people that are willing to try buying such coverage are having trouble using the federal exchange web site, or some of the truly broken state exchange sites doesn't change the main and most significant underlying complaint: the law itself is spectacularly flawed and results in deep financial distress for the same millions of people whether or not the web site was behaving in a useful way.
As someone who appears to trying to indirectly cheer on the ACA, please explain to me how the fact that my premiums have nearly tripled, my deductible has more than quadrupled, two of my local hospitals are now off limits, and that I've lost the services of my doctor is a good thing? Don't worry, I know the answer. You measure the goodness by looking at the people to whom all of that new money that's being taken from me is being handed, and love that the IRS has just hired 20,000 new people to handle the policing and penalizing surrounding this new tax. Yay! I hope you're happy. In the meantime, my household just took a huge cut in our effective income and a huge reduction in our healthcare options. This is what people are complaining about. The White House couldn't be happier that the web site is a train wreck, because it obfuscates the nature of the real disaster. That will be a lot clearer when the unconstitutionally delayed employer mandate kicks in, and tens of millions more lose their health insurance. But at least the people who can still manage to pay for it will have that forced-to-buy maternity care, even if they're single men or 55-year-old women. How convenient!